Sewing for Babies

This past week I've been super swamped making baby quilts and I love it!

When I got home from camping I immediately began working on a baby quilt for my friend Claire's new baby boy. I went fabric shopping last Wednesday with Rebeckah at M & L fabric discount store in Anaheim and we came back with several steals (especially since everything in the store was 20% off!) including the fabric to make this beauty:

 

The large blocks are cut from a panel of 8 images from Robert Kaufman's Animal Party Too! collection.  We used a yellow stripe from my stash for sashing around the large blocks and for binding, and then we used 3 coordinating prints from the Animal Party Too! collection for the stacked coins panels.  The backing is yet another coordinating print with fun blue stripes.

 

Rebeckah and I teamed up on this quilt like we normally do when it's for a mutual friend.  She did the sashing while I did the stacked coins, and then I sewed the top together.  Together we sandwiched and basted it, and then she quilted it.  I made and attached the binding and then both of us sewed it down by hand old-fashioned quilting bee style.

We worked together a little more on this quilt than we usually do because we only had 2 days to get it done!  Even working together we were still sewing the binding down when Claire arrived for the baby shower.  Luckily though we were able to hide out for the few minutes it took us to finish the quilt and nobody was the wiser.

Besides the stress of getting a quilt done last minute the downside to rushing is that there's no time to get a decent photo.  The above photos were snapped in my living room during the shower around 10 at night so you'll have to forgive the horrible lighting (and the fact that the quilt isn't pictured on my fence like my quilts normally are).

To add to the chaos of it all in the middle of working on Claire's quilt I got a custom order from Katie on Etsy for a bunting quilt on Thursday afternoon.  I was in such a rush when I started making it that I made 70% of the quilt top before I realized that I was WAY off in my dimensions and had to start over.  I waited until yesterday to start over so I had a chance to clear my mind and enjoy my weekend before jumping back in.  After a whirlwind sewing session I'm happy to say that I finished the custom order and it looks fantastic.

I hope Katie likes it.  It's for her niece Sophia Joanne and she had me tweak the colors of the quilt slightly to include orange and take out the darker blue and grey that were in the original quilt.

She also added customization to her quilt.  It doesn't stand out as well in the pictures as it does in person, but it was a lot of fun quilting the letters down (as well as a lot of work).  I shipped it off this morning and now I can settle down and enjoy some selfish sewing.  I'm currently fussy cutting centers to make polaroid blocks for the *picture-perfect* polaroid block swap going on over at Flickr, as well as cutting squares for the Super Mario Bros QAL.